What is an Architecture?
An architecture helps in identifying components and their relationship. It provides basic guidelines for representing the components. It helps in understanding that how system can evolve and enhanced.

What is Enterprise Architecture (EA)?
Before getting into EA, we need to understand what an enterprise is? An enterprise organization is a set of companies with a common goal.
Now an enterprise can have different applications, solution components at different levels. EA helps getting the bigger picture by putting all the elements together. It helps understand how these applications interact with each other. How different processes are dependent and related.

Why an organization needs an EA?
This helps us understand impact of change at one part on whole enterprise, and hence helps in decision making, lowering down cost of operations, sharing of resources and capabilities, manage security, change management, helps make – buy- outsource decision etc. In addition their can be regulatory drivers in some govt and non-govt organizations which need the entity to maintain EA.

How do Architecture Frameworks help?
An Architecture framework provides common vocabulary so that every stakeholder’s understanding is same. It provides a set of tools and building blocks that can be used to create final architecture. In addition it provide a list of standards so that everybody involved can follow similar strategy.

What are different Architecture domains?
Common frameworks like TOGAF provide 4 domains
Business Architecture: Understanding of business processes.
Data Architecture: Structure of logical and physical data.
Application Architecture: Design of application systems to be created and deployed, their interactions and mapping to core business processes.
Technology Architecture: Details on infrastructure, middleware, deployments, communications etc.